What Powers Does Kent’s Director of Public Health Have Over Sewage Pollution?
Following on from yesterday’s article, Kent E. coli Cases, Sewage and the Public Health Risk, the next question is unavoidable. If sewage pollution is plainly a [...]
Kent County Council
Reform UK KCC Cabinet Member David Wimble’s Looker Accused of Misleading Readers on Kent County Council Debt
The Shepway Vox Team went back to the documents. What we found was not a careful picture of Kent County Council’s current debt costs, but an old snapshot repackaged as a [...]
Cllr David Wimble Suggests Pulling Turner Contemporary Funding After MP Challenges Kent County Council ‘Savings’ Claim
When a senior politician is accused of inflating a headline “savings” number, there’s a simple, boring remedy: publish the workings, explain the language, and let [...]
Kent County Council Budget: Reform UK’s Debt Pledge and the Risks Behind the Numbers
After more than seven hours of debate at Sessions House, Reform UK passed its first ever Kent County Council budget — and did it with a political flourish that could not [...]
Kent County Council HQ U-Turn: County Hall Basement Contract Casts Doubt on Invicta House “Savings”
Reform UK promised a cheaper headquarters plan: ditch the Invicta House refurbishment, bring staff back into Sessions House, and spend “a relatively small amount” [...]
Ofsted: Kent Care Leavers in Unsafe Homes
In Kent, young adults leaving care are telling inspectors something no “corporate parent” should ever have to hear: I don’t feel safe where I live. In a local authority [...]
Wimble’s Wobble: KCC Cabinet Member David Wimble Says “£52m” Adult Social Care Overspend — KCC’s Own Papers Say Otherwise
During a debate at Folkestone & Hythe District Council’s Full Council meeting, Reform UK councillor David Wimble backed extra support for residents “down on their [...]
Folkestone Road of Remembrance Landslip: Closure Timeline and Kent County Council’s £5m Stabilisation Plan
For Folkestone, the Road of Remembrance is not just a convenient cut-through between the harbour area and The Leas. It is also symbolic: a named route tied to the town’s [...]
Kent County Council 2025/26 Budget vs Forecast Outturn: What Q1–Q3 Reveals About Overspends in Adult Social Care and SEND
Kent County Council (KCC) agreed its 2025/26 budget in February 2025. In simple terms, it set out how much the council expected to spend day-to-day on services (social care, [...]
Folkestone Library: The Rise, Decline and Fight to Save Grace Hill’s Grade II Listed Landmark
Grace Hill is not just a building with books. It is a piece of Folkestone’s civic identity: a red-brick landmark, Grade II listed, built in the late Victorian period [...]
How Folkestone Library Could Stay at Grace Hill: Three Realistic Plans to Keep the Historic Site Open Without Raising Council Tax Above 3.99%
Works have started on Kent County Council’s new “town-centre hub” at 14 Sandgate Road — the former Woolworths — combining adult education and Folkestone Library, [...]
Kent County Council Budget Compared: Reform UK 2026/27 vs Conservatives 2025/26 — The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Kent County Council (KCC) has now put two very different budget stories on the public record. The first is the Conservative administration’s approved 2025/26 budget (voted [...]
Folkestone Library: Grace Hill Sale Looms as KCC Set To Move Service to 14 Sandgate Road (Old Woolworths)
When Kent County Council finally shut the doors of Folkestone Library’s landmark Grace Hill building in December 2022, it did so on a stark claim: the building had become [...]
Kent County Council Budget 2026/27 Explained: Growth, Environment & Transport (GET) Spending and What It Means for Roads, Highways, Waste and Transport
Kent County Council’s Growth, Environment & Transport (GET) committee papers for 2025/26 and 2026/27 show a clear shift in both the size and the shape of the [...]
Kent’s Pothole Stats Contradict Each Other: Press Release vs FOI Figures
Newspapers, or bloggers aren’t like the government… if we make state-ments we have to prove they’re true. Kent’s highways story this winter has offered a gentle [...]
Kent County Council Funding Explained: Why the “£50m Boost” and “£127m Increase” Are Both True (Fair Funding vs Core Spending Power)
If you ever want to start a festive row in a Kent WhatsApp group, don’t mention politics. Mention “extra government funding” — and then watch three people produce [...]
Reform UK’s Paranoid “Coup” Claim in Kent: Political Theatre Meets the Hard Limits of the Law
By any normal standard of political language, accusing the Prime Minister of plotting a “coup” against Kent County Council is the sort of thing you say when you’ve run [...]
Michael Hadwen at Kent County Council as Reform UK Creates Taxpayer-Funded Political Assistant Roles: Has He Already Been Appointed?
Updated: 19 Dec 15:55 Mr Michael Hadwen was in the Kent County Council chamber yesterday. On its own, that is not a crime, a scandal, or even unusual: local democracy is [...]
“Like Nuclear Weapons”: Kent County Council Approves Political Assistants — Taxpayer Cost Up to £98,564 a Year (Plus On-Costs)
“If my enemy has one, then I ought to have one.” That was the Christmas-season dilemma put to Kent County Council this week as members voted to approve taxpayer-funded [...]
Kent County Council Political Assistants: Reform UK Plan Could Cost Taxpayers Up to £98,564 a Year in Salaries (Plus On-Costs)
Kent County Council will be asked at Full Council tomorrow (Thursday 18 December) to approve the creation of Political Assistant (agenda item 11) posts for qualifying [...]
Reform UK’s Kent Highways Contract: KCC’s “£50m-a-Year” Ringway Deal vs the Official £2bn Price Tag — Is It Value for Money?
Updated: 9 Dec @ 09:20 Reform-led Kent County Council announced on 19 November 2025 that Ringway will take over its core highways maintenance contract from May 2026, [...]
Kent County Council’s Lobbyist: Policy Connect, Missing Spend Trail, and the Questions Over Who Pays for Influence
Kent County Council, like many other organisations and companies, uses a lobbyist to get its voice heard at government level. The lobbyist it has used most frequently is [...]
Kent County Council Adult Social Care Debt: Nearly £4m Written Off in Five Years as Costs Rise, Arrears Grow and Cases Go to Court
Kent County Council (KCC) has written off £3,919,551 of adult social care debt over the five financial years from April 2020 to April 2025, according to an FOI disclosure [...]
Kent County Council Budget Overspend at Half-Time: Reform UK Era Faces Adult Social Care Crisis
Half-way through the 2025–26 financial year, the scoreboard at County Hall does not make pretty reading. Against a net revenue budget of £1.53 billion, Kent County Council [...]
Exposed: Cllr David Wimble’s Misleading Kent SEND Transport Claims — Fact-Checked and Debunked
In a recent Looker “rant” Kent County Councillor David Wimble blames home-to-school transport (HTST) and “self-diagnosing” parents for council tax hikes, [...]